He smiled at that at least, even if grim-faced. His voice had such a flat certainty to it. A clipped certainty. So unlike the flirt at the bar or even him over the phone.

“You did me a favor, bringing all the bad actors out of the woodwork so I could get at them. But, in the end, it didn’t much matter to me who took care of who. So why get involved.”

“What if I’d swallowed the key?”

“The key? Oh—the clues? Good idea to bug both the cabin and the house, as it turns out. Once I knew the letter existed, I got the gist from your lovely stepmother. Just recently.”

Flare of anger.

“She’s not my stepmother. Did you kill her, too?”

“My, the things we worry about at the end of history. No. I didn’t have to—she was happy to tell me.”

To be expected. I felt more betrayed by Hellmouth Jack. That didn’t make sense, meant I’d relaxed too much into the banter of our conversations.

“I’ve always been more discreet than Langer anyway,” he added.

“Langer was the last one, wasn’t he?”

“Last what? Lone ranger? Anger management counselor? Inept courier?”

“Last member of Contila. Of any note.”

“True. Contila membership has become very elite in recent months. But there’s one left.”

“Who?”

“Silvina, of course. And she—or her ‘child,’ her pet project—is up here somewhere, isn’t she?”

I said nothing.

“Surely you, too, have looked askance at that hit-and-run report. Surely you, too, would like someone to find her ashes in the ocean and run a DNA test?”

I said nothing. Didn’t want to help him. Didn’t want to be complicit that way. I felt his gaze would warp the discovery. Irrational, but I’d just found where Silvina had existed in my life, the compass point. I wanted that kept pure.

“We could do this ‘the hard way,’ as they say. But I like you, Jill. I like especially how tough you are. Maybe I did shield you a bit, but you took chances. You made your own luck. And you have been a tremendous help to me. It’s not hard to guess now, anyhow: Silvina used the cover of the mining operation to complete her project up here. And we’re going to find it—the rebel angels.”

“This is what you were after all along,” I said. “Just chance it’s me, not Langer.”

“Three birds with one stone is better than one, better than two. Whatever Silvina planned, neither you nor Langer should be the ones to decide what to do with it.”

“‘It.’”

“A biological weapon, of course.”

But that could mean so many things. Weapon. Biological. It could mean a living mask that helped you breathe or it could mean a poison that wiped out a million people.

“What will you do with it?”